Crucial Ballistix Memory Elite DDR4

Crucial recently updated its product line-up with the addition of 2666 MHz DDR4 modules sporting the “Ballistix Elite” moniker. With Crucial being the first company that supplied with DDR4, overclocking experience with memory and bench marking began with Micron IC’s, which were topping out at 2400 MHz at the time.

Seeing this speed boost gets me a bit excited as an over clocker more time tuning over-clocks. When it comes time to relating real-world performance differences DDR4 products might offer the consumer. Crucial is the consumer-facing division of Micron, who has been in the memory business for a long time. Providing flash-based storage and SSDs along with memory, they are a “household name” to tech enthusiasts. Their past memory solutions have been some of the better options for low latency performance, but they have not always topped the MHz charts.

With DDR4 being an entirely new platform for new CPU’s and motherboards, comparisons to bygone technologies prove an exercise in futility. Adding in numbers from past X79-based systems would not truly provide the right field for comparison either since the new Haswell-E CPUs offer a substantial performance increase over past X79 Express IvyBridge-E and SandyBridge-E CPU’s. So the following numbers are from current test platform only.

There is also another subject to consider, and it must be mentioned, although it does have to do with CPU-related performance. Getting the most out of any DDR4 memory is only truly possible with some overclocking. Haswell-E CPU’s communicate with the memory via their L3 cache whose speed is set dynamically by default. This means that cache speed at idle sits at 1200 MHz, but increases to much higher speeds at load, based on which CPU model you have. With my retail i7-5930K, speed at load is 3000 MHz. So in order to eliminate this aspect of the platform as a bottleneck, both CPU and cache speeds are increased under all testing conditions. As such, the performance offered by this product under stock configurations may differ from the numbers reported here.

Specs

MANUFACTURER: Crucial

MODEL: BLE4K4G4D26AFEA

SPEED RATING: DDR4-2666 (PC4-21300)

RATED TIMINGS: 16-17-17-36

CAPACITY: 16 GB (4 GB x4)

TESTED VOLTAGE: 1.2 V

PCB TYPE: 8-Layer

REGISTERED/UNBUFFERED: Unbuffered

ERROR CHECKING: Non-ECC

FORM FACTOR: 288-pin UDIMM

WARRANTY: Lifetime

Determination

Crucial has a wide spread of offerings that embody every ideal, except, of course, for looks. That is a big part to be liked the Crucial Ballistix Elite, and with a matte black finish, these simply disappear into your case and perform pretty well while being almost invisible.

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